Monday, November 30, 2015

Of my 3 girls, I breastfed Cass, my youngest daughter for the longest period. Over 3 years of blissful bonding between the two of us seemed long yet too short! It was the 3 most cherished years that I had with Cass, my last baby.

When I was pregnant with Cass, I told myself that I would have no other ways of feeding her except to breastfeed her exclusively for as long as I could. Well, I wanted to save money on expensive baby formula and most of all, I wanted the best for her. And I was lazy too - lazy to prepare formula milk at ungodly hours, lazy to sterilize bottles and I did not want to waste money spending on expensive baby bottles.

Above: Chubby Cass at slightly over a month old in May 2008. She was breastfed on demand exclusively.

That was the best decision I made for Cass. I successfully breastfed her for over 3 years - direct feeding, sans any milk bottle. It was so convenient and I did not lose any sleep as we co-slept. For over 3 years, Cass slept under my armpit and I breastfed her on demand. She slept very well and so did I. When she was hungry in the middle of the night, my boops were readily available for her :) When she was in pain, my boops were there to soothe her. There was not a single time that I denied her of my boops, except the time when she was in the hospital before and after her surgeries. We have saved so much money on baby formula, baby bottles and even on sanitary pads for 3 years! For 3 years, I was on 'menopausal mode' with no menstruation as I was breastfeeding.

It’s never too early to start thinking about how you're going to feed your baby. Today, many women are choosing to breastfeed their babies. The benefits of breastfeeding your baby are manifold.

Benefits of breastfeeding your baby:
Breast milk is the only natural food designed for your baby.
Breastfeeding protects your baby from infections and diseases.
It’s available whenever and wherever your baby needs a feed.
Breast milk is non-toxic and not contaminated.
Breast milk is full of vitamins, minerals and precious anti-bodies to protect baby from a wide range of diseases and ailments like diarrhea, respiratory infections, allergies and much more.
Breast milk is easily digestible.
Breast milk is always at the right temperature.
Encourages brain development.
It can build a strong physical and emotional bond between mother and baby.
It can give you a great sense of achievement.

Why breastfeeding is good for mommies?
Reduces chances of getting breast cancer
Burns calories (up to 600 calories per day) and helps you to get back into shape at a faster pace.
It's FREE!

When I was still breastfeeding Cass, the news on the hundreds of babies and toddlers in China who died and left in critical condition due to ingestion of baby formula adulterated with poison left me heartbroken. I felt the pain of the mothers who lost their babies. With mother's milk, you will have no doubts on the milk that your baby drinks.

When Cass was just a few months old, both Alycia and Sherilyn were down with chicken pox. I was worried sick that Cass would be infected by the chicken pox virus too. And there was no way that I could leave them and seek refuge with Cass some where else while they recuperated from chicken pox at home. I had to care for 2 sick kids and nurse an infant. Thankfully, Cass was spared from the chicken pox virus, all thanks to my anti-bodies that she ingested from the breast milk as I have had chicken pox before!

Breastfeeding is the healthiest way to feed your baby. Exclusive breastfeeding (giving your baby breast milk only) is recommended for around the first six months (26 weeks) of your baby's life. After that, giving your baby breast milk alongside other food will help them continue to grow and develop healthily.

Whether you nurse your baby for days, weeks, months, or years, you will both benefit. If you are a new mother and are still hesitant to begin breastfeeding your baby, it's always worth giving breastfeeding a try. Even if it doesn’t work out, you can always stop nursing at any point. Take it one day at a time and remember than even one feeding at the breast provides important benefits to both you and your baby.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

We had lunch of seafood and dim sum at Unique Seafood, PJ after church.

Spinach with minced meat and an egg cooked in claypot - Unique's signature veggie dish. This is so delish and easy to whip up. I'm going to try dishing this out soon!

After lunch, we dropped by our friends' cafe - Cottle Coffee for a complimentary coffee tasting session before their launch next month. Our friends are Malaysian and migrated to Australia. They have now brought Aussie brand Cottle Coffee to Malaysia with exciting healthy OZ creations in their menu.

Above: Our friend, Mel with Cass and Sherilyn.

Cass and Sherilyn were besotted with Monday, the stray cat that went into our friends' cafe on a Monday! They named their adopted cat Monday. Our cat-loving friends also have a cat named Friday that they adopted in KL and Friday is now a very, very much loved cat residing in Australia :)

After another day of digging into rich food, we had toasties, cucumbers and tomatoes for dinner. Yup, a breakfast for dinner. And I am still feeling very bloated after last night's meat-intense dinner at Red Kettle! Tomorrow I MUST MUST force my arse off the bed at 6:30am to swim my usual 22-24 laps in the pool. I've skipped swimming for a week to catch up on my beauty sleep. I better get back into shape in the pool before another week of food binging in Hong Kong next week!

Saturday, November 28, 2015

She bugged me to let her use my nail polish but I said NO. When I was busy trying to salvage my photos, this opportunist quietly sneaked out my nail polish and had a great time with her side-kick, her 2che. I was just too busy to see what a mess she's done to her nails. NO EYE SEE!!! I only wanted to see the pictures restored in my blogs!

I only wanted to find a way for my pictures to appear in my blogs again and left the girls to be mischievous today. Thank you very much Google Plus!! You changed your settings and did not even ask us if we're OK to the changes. Now, my latest pictures don't appear in my blogs anymore. I spent 2 days grilling my brain trying to find a solution and tried half a dozen of solutions and finally came to one. Now my pictures are hosted on Facebook, in an ANONYMOUS account haha!

Facebook, don't you dare change your settings again. I am counting on you for my pictures to appear in my blogs!!

Friday, November 27, 2015

After collecting my free package of Izumio and Super Lutein from my friend's house at the Shah Alam Golf Course, we headed to The School @ Jaya One for lunch.

Hubby was in the mood to try the food trucks and stalls at the street food section, just at the entrance of The School.

Guess which stall was first to have caught my eyes?

SANGKAYA COCONUT ice-cream! My absolute favorite! And it has toasted coconut flakes too. If you know me well, you'll know that I am nuts over coconuts :D Without hesitation, I bought a scoop each for the girls.

Coconut shells used as bowls with young coconut flesh, for the coconut ice-cream.

Hubs and I shared this coconut ice-cream on a coconut shell with coconut flesh, toasted coconut flakes, red kidney beans and peanut nibs.

We had ice-cream as our appetizer for lunch! In fact, that was the first solid food that went into our tummies that Sunday morning. Sometimes, it feels good to go against the grain, to get out of rut :)

The girls stopped at the Korean sushi and kimchi stall and bought some tuna kimchi and tuna sushi after sampling them. I was too busy enjoying my Sangkaya ice-cream and totally forgot about snapping a picture of the sushi and kimchi :)

I did not have the chance to sample this as I was busy cleaning myself from the sticky sweet lychee milk tea, aargh!!!

This Thai papaya salad with anchovy sauce is the HOTTEST I have ever tasted! My mouth was burning after just one small mouthful of papaya and I had to spit it out instantly. Even hubby who is a chili junkie could not tolerate this plate of flame! We had this packed away and I gave it to our part-time Indon helper who could stomach fiery food.

Pad Thai...

This glass of cool pandan and lemon grass drink was really refreshing and aromatic and managed to douse the heat in my burning mouth.

Thai sticky rice with mango and coconut milk. There was also another Thai street kuih that resembled and tasted like kuih talam that we ordered but no picture was taken.

We also ordered a stir-fried kailan with salted fish, a beef green curry and a grilled chicken in skewers but all the pictures were not taken as I wasn't in the right mood for photography with a sticky wet dress clinging on to my thighs!

Overall, the food from this Thai restaurant is just mediocre. Crowd was good though, noticeably from the reasonably priced food.

She woke up one day and could not move because she was in so much pain. She went to visit a GP who took a blood test immediately and diagnosed her as having Rheumatoid Arthritis since she was in so much pain and she was very pale. The blood results showed negative for RA.

5 days later, she made an appointment with a Rheumatologist and was immediately hospitalised. The blood test showed positive for LUPUS with a count of 1640. She was given Oxygen for a few days and stayed at hospital for 5 days because her platelet count was at 60 and was discharged once it hit 100 with steroid medication.

This bad flare up continued for a whole 3 weeks and she was hospitalised again with 500ml of steroid infusion. She couldn't sleep and kept getting anxiety attacks and became depressed. Depression is one of the symptoms of LUPUS. When she went home, she couldn't sleep either and had to be on Medical Leave for 3 weeks. She was put on sleeping pills and Xanax to calm her down before she went back to work.
Fast forward to Sept 2014, patient traveled to Melbourne where she had a flare up again. Stress causes flare ups. She experienced joint pain and swelling and again couldn't move. In October 2014, traces of protein were found in her urine samples and in January 2015, she took a 24 hour urine test that detected protein in her urine at a borderline level. Her medication for LUPUS is plaqueril (an anti malaria drug) to suppress the LUPUS. Whilst she suffered in Melbourne with a flare, she took a double dose just so she could enjoy her holiday before starting a new job. 1 dose was 200mg per day.
Patient started Izumio and Super Lutein (SL) in February 2015.

One of the first improvements that she experienced was no more protein in the urine. But in July 2015, she started to have some knee pain as her new job was extremely demanding being thrown into a completely new industry with a steep learning curve, Patient had difficulty walking. She increased her dosage of Izumio and Super Lutein to 3 Izumio and 15 SL and the next morning, the pain was gone. Nevertheless, she made a visit to the Doctor just in case as she was traveling to Shanghai 2 days later. She could still see that there was swelling but no more pain through the tendons and the bones. The Doctor could not believe that her pain was caused by LUPUS because it was impossible for the pain to disappear so fast for LUPUS. To be on the safe side, she took some muscle relaxants and painkillers just before she left for Shanghai. Had she not had to travel, she says that she would not have taken the additional meds and would have relied on Izumio and Super Lutein to give her body time to heal itself naturally.

Despite a lot of stress in her new job, Patient has had no more major flare ups. Sometimes she feels intermittent mild pain that comes for a day or 2. Her fingers used to get majorly swollen when stressed. No more.
Patient has been off alcohol for 6 months because she had to be on steroids and because of that got very large. After Izumio and Super Lutein, she lost 4kg and has maintained this weight despite eating as per normal and has done no exercise.

She now walks 18 apartments from 9am to midnight and is very stressed due to construction deadlines over 25 floors yet she has not had a flare.
When she was in the Maldives on holiday and left her project to others, everything that could go wrong in KL went wrong and she was constantly on the phone being very stressed out. Yet she had no flares.
Patient works 7 days a week and now takes 5 SL and 1-2 Izumio daily. She hopes that this will help other SLE sufferers and advances her sincere wish to help those who suffer from SLE know that there is hope

For more reading on Izumio and Super Lutein, please click on the following links:

Ingredients:
1. Chicken - you can use any part of the chicken you fancy. I use chicken boobies as they are the healthiest part of the chicken :)
2. Marinate chicken with Lea & Perrin sauce, soy sauce, pepper and some preservative-free Kikkoman Terriyaki sauce
3. Big onions - I used 1 whole onion
4. Minced garlic
5. 1 small can of green peas.

Directions:
1. Pan-fry chicken fillet in non-stick skillet. Keep the marinate sauce for use later.
2. When chicken fillet turns golden brown, sweep them aside the wok or dish them out. Sautee the big onions and garlic until fragrant
3. Add can of green peas, without the water in the can
4. Add in marinate sauce and saute till the sauce bubbles.
5. Mix the chicken fillet with the sauce and green peas well and dish out
6. Decorate with cucumbers, tomatoes and whatever herbs you have

This is one of the dishes that my papa can cook really well. His Hainanese green peas chicken chop is the best.

Happy trying and I am sure your family will love this dish as much as we do :)

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Our Sunday, the hubs finally had the time to chauffeur me all the way to the Shah Alam golf course where my friend stays to collect my free package of Izumio and Super Lutein.

I met my sales target and won myself an all-expenses paid trip to Japan to visit the Super Lutein factory with free pocket money (total package worth RM8k +) in September 2015 but I could not go as school was not out yet then. In exchange for the trip, I got myself a full package of 12 boxes of Izumio and 3 bottles of Super Lutein worth RM5,330!! On top of this free package, I am also now earning a 4-figure monthly income from Naturally Plus. Though this amount is just a drop in the ocean as compared to what my upline is earning, I am confident that if I continue to 'work' hard, I will be able to earn half as much as what she's earning now.

Do you wanna know how much my direct upline earns?

For the last 2 months, she earned over RM30,000 a month! Yes, a 5-figure pay credited directly into her bank account!

See, Naturally Plus rocks! And I have awesome pawsome bosses and upline too. They groom me, nudge me gently to move my arse (haha, but to me this does not really feel like work but a passion), guide me and we have a wonderful supportive team.

So if anyone of you wants to earn passive income whilst getting yourself good health at the same time, the Naturally Plus business is the perfect business model for you. It's a beautiful package of good quality products, good reward system and good support all rolled into one.

For more reading on Izumio and Super Lutein, please click on the following links:

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Last Sunday, my elder brother, SIL and niece from Singapore were in KL again.

Here are some pix taken at Alexis Bistro @ Gardens Mall.

Cass with Raelyn, her bff. Cass hits it off really well with Raelyn and vice versa. When these 2 girls get together, they are really really rambunctious and they make head turns with their loud guffaw.

Monday, November 16, 2015

After a very heavy and meaty lunch of chicken and char siew rice, I wanted something meat-free for dinner. The girls were not keen to eat meat too. As I have a lot of wholemeal bread left in the fridge, I made pizza bread for the girls for dinner today. There was also a blanched siew pak choy veggie but no picture was taken.

Ingredients that I used:
1) 1 big punnet of fresh Portobello mushrooms
2) 1 ripened organic tomato
3) Lots of chopped garlic and onions
4) A handful of fresh rosemary
5) 3 tablespoon of bolognese sauce. I don't normally use bottled pasta sauce but I have been really busy today and did not have ample time to blend the tomatoes.

My yummy pot of Portobello mushrooms with aromatic rosemary.

In to the oven for 15 minutes at 170 degree Celsius....

The girls enjoyed their healthy crispy pizza bread. I asked them if they'd have preferred minced beef for the pizza topping but they voted meat out!

Friday, November 13, 2015

A few days ago, I made spiral spaghetti with beef bolognese sauce. This is one dish that the kids will never get bored of eating. But I find prepping this dish pretty time consuming as I do not use bottled pasta sauce. It can be made very easily and quickly with just a bottle of pasta sauce but I try not to buy bottled sauces. I make my sauce from scratch and it involves a lot of work from peeling, chopping, blending and cooking the sauce.

My sauce is made from blending 5 plump ripened organic tomatoes, carrots, celery and onions together in my Blendtec blender. And adding such dried herbs as thyme, Italian herbs and fresh dill.

I also added portobello and shiitake mushrooms for added nutrients and fiber. Oil used is avocado oil. Beef used is antibiotic-free Australian minced beef.

And lots of chopped Bombay onions for the flavor.

And this is mine - organic broccoli bolognese sans the high-carb noodles :D It is SO SO delish!

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Lunch and dinner yesterday had to be churned out really quickly as I had to be in the hospital again. This time, to get Cass' doctor to fill out the insurance claim form again -- for the 3rd time! And I could see that he was a tad pissed off :( I am thinking positively now, praying fervently and hoping to attract positive vibes so that this time round, the claim of RM5,000 will be approved! Pray for me, will ya, pretty please? :)

For dinner, I had wanted to takeout but the chef at our usual eatery hadn't arrived yet. Hubs asked us to eat at the Japanese restaurant at our condo but hello, that would cost us a minimum of RM80- RM90 and the food won't be sustaining enough for 3 growing girls and a mummy on diet.

So what the heck! I made a quick dash to the kitchen and prepared our favorite local delight - pork noodles with spinach for the girls and pork noodles with bitter gourd and spinach for moi.

If you or your close ones have diabetes and would like to try a natural approach to bring down the glucose level, there is nothing to lose by giving Izumio hydrogen water and Super Lutein a try.

I'd like to share with you testimonials from a few consumers in our team:

Testimonial #125 August 2015
My father in law has been faithfully taking 6sl and 1iw a day for a good 2 months. His sugar level has been high between 6.5 to 8 after fasting. He checked his sugar level every morning the last 2 months, but not much of improvement seen, reading fluctuated and still at the above 6.5 level! I told him not to give up and continue the iw and sl, He is getting there soon. And this morning, pop, the reading shows 5.2! A happy man he is now.. Haha! He doesn't change much of his diet, neither is he on any diabetes medication!

Testimonial #224 August 2015
With regards to my post in 29 April this year, I am very excited and glad to share that my hubby's diabetes screen show significant drop in the glucose level.. From 15 - 7.7!!! And, and, and...... The total cholesterol from 5.4 to 4.3 (normal range should be lesser than 5.2)!!! Due to the control of the above diabetes and cholesterol, the triglycerides (三酸甘油脂） drop from 17.9 MMOL/L to 3.3 MMOL/L!!!
Te doctor is very surprise with the results, coz he previously thought that my hub's glucose level should only drop to 9 optimistically..
Btw, my hub is taking 6 sl + 1iw per day..
Woo hoo!!! Honestly we are very very much relief now.. Thanks to *** who introduced the product to me.. Banyak terima kasih~~~

Testimonial #37 October 2015
From a friend and neighbour.... Her mum was diagnosed with diabetes a year ago and her reading hovered around 15.3 even while on Janumet. She started on 3 SL n 1 Izumio 2 times a day 3 months ago. I received the below from her last night. Note there has been no change in the meds and dosage. We will expect her to reduce her meds significantly in the next follow up.

For more reading on Izumio and Super Lutein, please click on the following links:

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Smoothies are sweet, refreshing and are a perfect thirst quencher. But if you are diabetic, go slow on fruits smoothies, especially on fruit juices (as juices are sans the fiber) as they spike up your blood sugar level quickly. The fruit smoothies that I prepare are only for the kiddos. The hubs and I don't drink them often, I only eat my fruits. Our girls love their daily smoothie-of-the-day. They are lazy to chew their fruits (yes, can you believe it?!), so swallowing a variety of fruits everyday in the form of smoothie ensures that they get their daily dose of vitamin C and fiber.

Monday, November 9, 2015

The girls had a great time bonding with Raelyn, their cousin. Check out the pix!

The girls had soft-serve ice-cream after dinner on Saturday...

Play time...

Tucking into some sinful desserts after lunch on Sunday...

The desserts of waffles, molten lava cake and chocolate brownie were divine and therapeutic but I had totally forgotten to snap a picture of the name of the cafe! But we shall be back again soon and I shall remember to snap a picture of the cafe and put up another proper post on it this time.

My brother and family will be back in KL again this weekend and the girls look forward to another happy weekend spending time with them.

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Health Freak Mommy

About Me

Health Freak Mommy

Health Freak Mommy has been writing advertorials - both local and international since April 2007. HFM writes reviews and advertorials on products, restaurants and food. If you need to place an advertorial in this blog, please email Shireen at shireenyong@gmail.com.